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High Inflation and Bolivian Agriculture1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Ricardo Godoy  and
Mario De Franco
Ricardo Godoy
Affiliation:
Research Associate, Harvard Institute for International Development, and Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University.
Mario De Franco
Affiliation:
Director, Gestión Pública, Instituto Centroamericano de Administración de Empresas (INCAE), Managua, Nicaragua.
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Abstract

A nation that demands from its government nothing but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the bottom of its heart; it is the slave of its wellbeing, and the man who is to chain it can arrive on the scene.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , October 1992 , pp. 617 - 637
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

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8 We deflated nominal prices by the Consumer Price Index (CP1) (1985 = 100).

9 The terms of trade are defined as the ratio of Wholesale Agricultural Prices to Industrial Prices (1985 = 100).

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28 An anonymous referee perceptively observed that: ‘Low response of agricultural output to rising real wholesale producer prices suggests the hypothesis that the price rises were perceived as transitory. Peasants probably saved the extra proceeds and “invested” them in durable goods, that are often the preferred assets of the poor, instead of in improvements to increase their supply. Besides, under some reasonable hypotheses, better prices and income need not induce more work’.

29 As one anonymous referee noted, better wholesale prices do not imply, either factually or logically, better farmgate prices. Owing to the many imperfections in Bolivia's agricultural marketing system, improved wholesale agricultural prices may not have necessarily translated into higher farmgate prices.

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67 Information supplied by the National Institute of Statistics, 1989.

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